The Shape of Snakes

Viele Jahre ist es her, dass im Südwesten Londons eine Frau unter ungeklärten Umständen ums Leben kam: In einer regnerischen Nacht fand die junge Mrs. Ranelagh ihre Nachbarin Ann Butts sterbend am Straßenrand. Schon damals hatte Mrs. Ranelagh den schrecklichen Verdacht, dass die von den Anwohnern verfemte Außenseiterin ermordet wurde. Jetzt ist für Mrs. Renelagh endlich der Tag gekommen, sich von den Gespenstern der Vergangenheit zu befreien - und Annie zu einem späten Recht zu verhelfen . . . .

November 1978. Britain is on strike. The dead lie unburied, rubbish piles in the streets - and somewhere is West London a black woman dies in a rain-soaked gutter.
Her passing would have gone unmourned but for the young woman who finds her and who believes - apparently against reason - that Annie was murdered. But whatever the truth about Annie - whether she was as mad as her neighbours claimed, whether she lived in squalor as the police said - something passed between her and Mrs Ranelagh in the moment of death which binds this one woman to her cause for the next twenty years.
But why is Mrs Ranelagh so convinced it was murder when by her own account Annie died without speaking? And why would any woman spend twenty painstaking years uncovering the truth - unless her reasons are personal . . . ?